Blog Archive

Welcome to the Blog Archive for Itowler.com

You can use this to browse older postings, by year and then month. To get started, just click on a year, and then click on the month that you are interested, and you will be shown all of the blog posts in that year and month.

Wow, 2008 flew by. The year has passed, and I did not even notice. Lots going on this year, but its time to take a look at the goals I set for 2008 and see how well I did. Without really looking very hard, I can already tell you that I did not do that great of a job on my goals list, so many of them will be carried over to 2009. I will list the 2008 goals in blue below, and then a description of what I accomplished below that.

The Baskin and Forster Atlas was packed with interesting items for me. One of the maps that I found surprised me. It was a detailed map for the city of Hope, Bartholomew County, Indiana in 1870. I have several members of my line that lived in the town at the time, so I was curious about the map. Upon closer inspection it turns out that the map has some pretty significant information for me.

The surnames that are linked to the City of Hope are maternal lines, and center on the Spach/Spaugh and Arbuckle surnames. The map in particular is significant to the Spach/Spaugh name.

A little history about the Spach/Spaugh surname. Adam Spach is the patriarch for the Spach/Spaugh surname in the United States. Adam was deeply involved in the Moravian Church, and even helped start a Church in North Carolina. A few generations after Adam Spach died, the Spach/Spaugh's moved to Indiana. I am failry certian that they moved because of the Moravian Church, but I am not sure if the Church founded the City of Hope. The Spach/Spaughs that I am related to were active members in the Hope Moravian Church, and may have been "founding Members".

For the first time in 6 years we have a Christmas tree, and it's a real one at that. The last 2 years or so we have done a small fake tree that was only 3 feet high or so, and it usually got relegated to a corner in section of the house not really used. This year we decided to actually get a real tree, and it is actually located in a prominent place, the living room.

Since this is our first real tree that we have had to acquire a few things such as a tree stand and lights. Instead of the normal lights we choose to purchase some LED lights. I think that they look great, and they use less energy than the mini-lights, and even less energy than the standard bulbs of old. LED stands for Light emitting diode.

A standard light bulb produces light by passing a current through a filament, the filament gets excited and heats up and glows, producing heat and light. LED's produce light in a different manner, electroluminescence. The process that LED's use to generate light uses far less energy, and they should last at least 5 times longer than a standard bulb.

We are using 4 strands of LED lights and all four strands should use less energy together than a single strand of mini-lights, which is cool. I did some looking around on the internet, and it seems that the LED light strands are pretty expensive. We found a great deal on the light strands at Sam's Club and Wal-mart.

Today, 01 Dec 2008 is World AIDS Day. It is also the 20th Anniversary of the event. Why do I mention it? A few reasons. First off, it's what I do. I work in a research lab that works on Mother to child HIV transmission. While mother to child transmission in the US is still an issue, it is not near the issue that it is in Africa. The second reason I call attention to it, is because it is the biggest pandemic the world has ever seen. HIV was first described in 1981, and has exploded since. There is no cure, and the virus has proven to be very elusive, able to work its way around drugs that are commonly given to fight HIV.